BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- David Shaw is a smart man. No wonder. He's coaching at Stanford, with players who aced the ACT, amid eggheads who propel Silicon Valley.

So when David Shaw speaks, you'd better listen.

And what David Shaw says his team and conference get no respect, he means it.

"Here's what's gonna be interesting," Shaw said after Stanford shocked then-No. 2 Southern Cal. "There are other conferences out there that are really, really good. And when they beat each other up, everybody says, 'Oh, you know it's such a tough conference, we're not gonna drop them down the rankings.' "

Case in point: LSU edged Alabama on a field goal a year ago, in overtime no less, but when the dust cleared at the end of the regular season the SEC West rivals were still ranked 1-2 and faced off for the national title. After 21st-ranked Stanford beat USC, the Trojans tumbled 11 spots to No. 13 in the AP poll.

An SEC team losing to a well-perceived team would have gotten the benefit of the doubt, just as Alabama did a year ago. But USC didn't after losing to a Stanford team that saw its stock drop with the graduation of Andrew Luck, yet still may be pretty good.

"We have a very, very good conference. You can't tell me us or (U)SC and Oregon aren't somewhere close to the top," Shaw added.

I can't tell you that Southern Cal is among the elite teams yet, not after struggling on the road against Syracuse and falling to Stanford. But I can tell you that Shaw is right. The Pac-12 probably deserves more credibility, given recent performances.

As for the SEC, it has earned the benefit of the doubt, though some fans and coaches will counter otherwise.

Author Chuck Thompson argues in a new book that the SEC is vastly overrated and cites numbers to back it up. The book is called "Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession."

Thompson argues that the SEC has a losing regular-season record against Pac- 12 schools and Big 12 schools, going back to 1998, and only above-average records against schools from the ACC, Big Ten and Big East over the same period.

Playing close to home and getting postseason mismatches, Thompson wrote, can explain the SEC's dominance in bowl games.

Thompson even explains why the SEC has won six straight BCS titles.

"So, if the SEC plays other conferences about even, why do SEC teams keep winning national championships?" Thompson writes in the book, an excerpt of which appeared in The PostGame.com. "That answer, of course, is the BCS and its corporate underwriters, who have created a reliable business model for determining national champions that is in all respects a self-fulfilling prophecy designed to protect its primary investment." My reply: Huh?

I'm not sure exactly what Thompson is saying. Maybe he's alleging a tie-in with the industrial-military complex, the CIA and the Bilderberg Group, all of which are conspiring to keep titles and money coming into Mike Slive's office.

But Thompson's book misses the real point.

The SEC has been the premier conference not since 1998, but since 2006, when the current streak began. How? By playing the toughest schedules week after week, by getting stronger, by survival of the fittest.

Five of the SEC's six straight BCS champs played top-five schedules. Not according to me, not according to the pollsters, but according to the NCAA statistical database. Florida started the run by surviving the nation's best schedule in 2006. And Alabama played the fifth-toughest slate a year ago, beating an LSU team that played the hardest schedule en route to New Orleans.

Alabama didn't drop off the face of the earth with a loss to LSU because it didn't deserve to. The teams were evenly matched and they played late in the season.

Oh, and this was the same conference that had produced five straight BCS champs.

Shaw is right about USC.

Stanford deserved more credit for the win and USC didn't deserve the free-fall for the loss. That respect must be earned, however, on the playing field and over time. Over years.

That's the way the SEC did it. The only way someone else will earn it is by ending the SEC's reign.